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Cloudflare’s Orange Me2eets: An End-to-End Encrypted, Self-hosted, Video Calling Solution

Orange Meets, now with E2EE.

cloudflare logo on left, an illustration of a video call with a webcam and monitor on t

Secure video conferencing software is vital for organizations handling sensitive data, more so when they have to comply with standards like HIPAA, GDPR, and PCI-DSS to protect private information and ensure regulatory compliance.

Having said that, Cloudflare recently released Orange Me2eets, a newish video calling app with end-to-end encryption, that's designed to provide privacy and security for group calls.

Orange Me2eets: What is It?

there are nine people in a video call using orange me2eets
Just a placeholder image of Orange Meets. (Source: Cloudflare)

You see, Cloudflare has this open source project called Orange Meets. It’s more of a demo for developers and researchers to explore than a polished app for everyday users.

That said, Orange Me2eets is an upgrade over the original offering, now strengthened with end-to-end encryption (E2EE) using the Messaging Layer Security (MLS) protocol, keeping video calls private, even from the infrastructure provider.

Cloudflare built this as an open source project to explore secure, E2EE group video calls at scale. By default, it uses the VP8 video codec for good quality and compatibility, and the app itself runs on a Selective Forwarding Unit (SFU) architecture, where the SFU can't read or access call data.

They also took inspiration from Discord’s DAVE E2EE video calling protocol to improve how the encrypted video streams work without causing playback issues in browsers. For example, they send the first few bytes of each VP8 video packet unencrypted, so the browser can play the video smoothly, while keeping the rest fully encrypted.

Get Orange Me2eets

Cloudflare has provided a live demo for testing, exploring its features, and getting a feel for how it works. If you find Orange Me2eets useful or see potential for your use case, you can consider self-hosting it on your own infrastructure for full control and privacy.

Suggested Read 📖

5 Best Open Source Video Conferencing Tools
Don’t trust the big tech with your data? Try these open source video conferencing tools for online meetings.
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